Do You Ever Shower With Your Characters?

I don’t want to get too personal, Modern Philosophers, but do you ever shower with your characters?

I should probably clarify that the question is aimed at my fellow writers, and I’m talking about plotting out story lines and writing dialogue in your head while showering.

If you’re not a writer, and you’re bringing fictional characters into the shower with you, I’m not looking to hear those stories.  What you do on your own time is up to you, but this is a family friendly blog, so please do not share those anecdotes here.

I don’t give the shower enough credit as a place for inspiration.  That praise normally is bestowed upon runs or long walks.  While those activities are perfect for getting some mental writing done, let’s not forget the shower.

Normally, I sing in the shower.  Lately, my tune of choice has been “The Ties That Bind” by Springsteen.  I’m finding the lyrics really speak to me at the moment, and this is a song that I have the vocal range to belt out very well.

But let’s get back to the creative process.  The other morning, I hit the shower after a run, and I had a conversation between Aaron and Holly going on in my head.  For those of you not in the know, those are the best friends from my regular Sunday short story.  The ideas for those posts will usually pop into my head as a line of dialogue, most of the time from Aaron, and then snowball into a full blown conversation after my mind comes up with Holly’s reply.

As I recently shared with a writer friend, I’ve been using those Sunday posts to hone my dialogue writing skills for my novel.

The novel is based on a short story from the blog, and my strategy has been to tackle the project like one long blog post.

As a result, it made sense to use my blog to try out various writing styles and conversation ideas for the book.

So I hit the shower mentally writing what should become this Sunday’s blog post, but somewhere along the line, I segued into a conversation between Sebastian and Nicki, the leads from the novel.

I wasn’t really sure where to begin Chapter 18, but by the time I’d turned off the water, I knew exactly where to go.  It’s amazing how active the mind can be when a little soap and hot water is added to the equation.

If you are not taking your characters into the shower with you, I highly recommend you give it a shot.

After all, they’re in close quarters in the pages of your work in progress, so why not give them some time to freshen up while you get creative?

Do you have a go to activity when you need to do some mental writing?